Between 1958 and 1965 the Decca record company made the first complete recording to be released of Richard Wagner's operatic tetralogy, ("The Nibelung's Ring"), comprising ("The Rhinegold"), ("The Valkyrie"), and ("Twilight of the Gods"). Of the four component operas, there had been two previous studio recordings of , and a radio recording of that was released on record in 1956, but the Decca Ring was the first recording of the cycle planned and recorded for the gramophone.
The recording of The Ring was conceived and produced by Decca's senior producer, John Culshaw, who engaged the Vienna Philharmonic, the conductor Georg Solti and leading Wagner singers including Birgit Nilsson, Wolfgang Windgassen, Hans Hotter and Gottlob Frick and, in roles they did not play onstage, well-known singers such as Kirsten Flagstad, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Joan Sutherland. Culshaw and his engineering colleagues set out to capture on disc performances that would recreate in listeners' minds the drama that Wagner intended, compensating for the lack of visual images with imaginative production, making use of stereophonic techniques that became possible shortly before the start of the recording of the cycle.
The recordings were made in the , Vienna, and issued on long-playing records. They were subsequently transferred to compact disc, in which form they have been continuously available since 1984. In polls for BBC Music and Gramophone magazines the Decca Ring has been voted the greatest recording ever made, and it has won numerous honours, including and Grammy awards.
Background Before the introduction of the long playing disc (LP) in the late 1940s a complete recorded Ring was, as the Decca producer John Culshaw put it, "unthinkable".Culshaw, p. 19 Piecemeal excerpts had been issued on 78 rpm records, but a complete Ring would have required well over a hundred discs.Culshaw, p. 21 The Decca record company began recording complete operas on LP in 1950, starting with Mozart's ("The Seraglio"),Stuart, p. 1094 but it was believed throughout the industry that studio recordings of Wagner operas would generally be uneconomic. There were two such recordings – ("The Mastersingers") (Decca, 1950–51),Stuart, pp. 1096 and 1102 and (EMI, 1952) – but in general it was thought that the only financially viable course was to tape live performances.Culshaw, pp. 21 and 46 Decca taped the 1951 and 1955 Ring cycles at the Bayreuth Festival, but the results were not considered satisfactory and were not issued at the time.
Culshaw believed that recording live performances was a second-best approach: he strongly advocated studio recordings in which the absence of the action and staging seen in the theatre would be redressed by imaginative production, "creating something like a 'theatre of the mind' which enabled the listener at home to get involved with Wagner's characters and the sweep of his great music-drama".Culshaw, p. 17 For this, he believed, stereophonic recording, developed in the mid-1950s, was a key factor. Alan Rich, music critic of the New York Herald-Tribune, later concurred; having heard the Decca set of he wrote that few opera house productions were able to "rekindle the flame of the composer's plan", but in this recording "the most difficult to stage music drama, perhaps, in the entire repertory becomes a complete experience with no staging at all".
Decca hoped to record with Kirsten Flagstad in the central role of Brünnhilde, but she had retired from the operatic stage in the early 1950s,"Mme Kirsten Flagstad", The Times, 10 December 1962, p. 14 and when Culshaw invited her to record the opera in 1957 she declined to attempt a complete recording. The result was a set of Act I conducted by Hans Knappertsbusch with Flagstad as Sieglinde, and a separate one of the ("Announcement of death") scene from Act II, and the whole of Act III, conducted by Georg Solti with Flagstad as Brünnhilde. Both sets were recorded in the , Vienna; the orchestra was the Vienna Philharmonic.Stuart, pp. 1125−1126 and 1129
1958: Das Rheingold By 1958 Decca, with its pre-eminent technical team −The Times called them "Decca's incomparable engineers""The Götterdämmerung everyone has been waiting for", The Times, 8 May 1965, p. 5 − was ready to embark on a complete studio recording of the four Ring operas. At Culshaw's instigation the company decided to begin with , the first and shortest of the four. Culshaw engaged Solti (whom he regarded as "the great Wagner conductor of our time"),Culshaw, p. 52 the Vienna Philharmonic and a roster of established Wagner singers. The cast included Flagstad in one of her last recorded performances, in the role of Fricka, which she had never sung on stage.Culshaw, p. 130
With the help of his engineering colleagues Gordon Parry and James Brown, Culshaw took exceptional pains to meet Wagner's musical requirements. Where the score calls for eighteen anvils to be hammered during two brief orchestral interludes – an instruction never followed in opera houses – Culshaw arranged for eighteen anvils to be hired and hammered, and Parry and Brown successfully captured the sound. There and elsewhere in the score the volume and clarity of sound were unprecedented on disc; the hi-fi aspects of the recording added to its appeal to the LP-buying public, as Culshaw recognised.Culshaw, p. 99
Cast
Wotan – George London Donner – Eberhard Wächter Froh – Waldemar Kmentt Loge – Set Svanholm Alberich – Gustav Neidlinger Mime – Paul Kuen Fasolt – Walter Kreppel Fafner – Kurt Böhme
Fricka – Kirsten Flagstad Freia – Claire Watson Erda – Jean Madeira Woglinde – Oda Balsborg Wellgunde – Hetty Plümacher Flosshilde – Ira Malaniuk
Before the recording sessions, Culshaw's opposite number from EMI, Walter Legge, had remarked to Solti and Culshaw, "? A beautiful work, but you won't sell fifty copies".Solti, p. 113 His prediction was wrong: the LP set won enthusiastic praise from reviewers − The Gramophone described the recording quality as "stupendous" and called the set "wonderful … surpass[ing] anything done before"Porter, Andrew, "Wagner – Das Rheingold", The Gramophone, March 1959, p. 85 − and the recording sold in exceptional numbers. It entered the Billboard charts of best-selling LPs, "surrounded by Elvis Presley and Pat Boone, and without another classical recording in sight".Culshaw, p. 124 But the progress of the Decca Ring was interrupted by contractual considerations. It was agreed by all concerned that for the other three Ring operas the participation of Birgit Nilsson as Brünnhilde was essential. Decca secured an exclusive contract with her, but she made it plain that her first priority was that Decca should record her in Tristan und Isolde. At around the same time she agreed to record for RCA Records, with whom Decca had a reciprocal agreement to share artists. These projects were both brought to fruition, in 1960 and 1961 respectively.Stuart, pp. 1144 and 283–284 Although comes next after in the tetralogy there was no appetite for another version of it so soon after RCA's, and so the next instalment in the Decca Ring was Siegfried, four years after Das Rheingold.Culshaw, pp. 126–128
1962: Siegfried For Siegfried, Culshaw had under contract the leading Brünnhilde of the day and, in Hans Hotter, the leading Wotan/Wanderer, but casting the title role caused difficulty. The best-known singer of Siegfried at the time was Wolfgang Windgassen, but in Culshaw's view the performer's voice was showing "distinct signs of wear and tear" after more than ten years of singing Wagner's exceptionally demanding tenor roles.Culshaw, p. 136 Culshaw found a younger singer, Ernst Kozub, for the role, but despite a fine voice Kozub failed to master the part and Culshaw turned to Windgassen, who stepped in at the last moment.Blyth, p. 395; and Culshaw, pp. 152–153 Joan Sutherland undertook the role of the Woodbird (), far removed from her usual repertoire.Culshaw, p. 143
Cast
Siegfried – Wolfgang Windgassen Mime – Gerhard Stolze Brünnhilde – Birgit Nilsson Wanderer (Wotan) – Hans Hotter Alberich – Gustav Neidlinger Fafner – Kurt Böhme Erda – Marga Höffgen Waldvogel – Joan Sutherland
The reviews were highly favourable. In The Gramophone Alec Robertson described the set as "the finest recording, as such, of opera that we have had so far, and one that embodies a magnificent performance of the great work".Robertson, Alec. "Siegfried", The Gramophone, April 1963, quoted in Culshaw, p. 173 The Stereo Record Guide commented, "Solti's array of singers could hardly be bettered. Windgassen is at the very peak of his form, lyrical as well as heroic. Hotter has never been more impressive on records, his Wotan at last captured adequately. Stolze, Neidlinger and Böhme are all exemplary and, predictably, Joan Sutherland makes the most seductive of woodbirds".Greenfield et al, p. 1430 In High Fidelity Conrad L. Osborne called the set "Solti's finest recorded accomplishment to date", and added, "On to , please".Quoted in Culshaw, p. 175
1964: Culshaw wrote, "Nilsson, Windgassen and Gottlob Frick (Hagen) had to be in the cast or there was no point in starting", and they were duly cast.Culshaw, pp. 181−182 The only major role in the piece for which no singer was the obvious choice was Gunther, "an important but weak character", who Culshaw considered needed a strong singer to prevent him from being overshadowed. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau agreed to sing the part.Culshaw, John. "", The Gramophone, May 1965, pp. 517–518 As Wagner called for steerhorns in Act II, Culshaw determined not to resort to the trombones usually played in the opera house, and commissioned a set of specially made steerhorns to produce the requisite "primitive, uncouth sound". Another, more controversial, attempt to represent Wagner's intentions was near the end of Act I, where the tenor Siegfried impersonates the baritone Gunther: the engineers subjected Windgassen's recorded voice to technological intervention to make it temporarily sound more like that of Fischer-Dieskau.
Cast
Brünnhilde – Birgit Nilsson Siegfried – Wolfgang Windgassen Waltraute – Christa Ludwig Gunther – Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau Gutrune – Claire Watson Alberich – Gustav Neidlinger Hagen – Gottlob Frick
First Norn – Helen Watts Second Norn – Grace Hoffman Third Norn – Anita Välkki Woglinde – Lucia Popp Wellgunde – Gwyneth Jones Flosshilde – Maureen Guy
The reception of the set surpassed that given to its two predecessors. In The Gramophone, Robertson called it "the greatest achievement in gramophone history yet",Robertson, Alec, "Wagner. Götterdämmerung, The Gramophone, May 1965, p. 541 and Desmond Shawe-Taylor described it as "a glorious achievement, which it will be difficult to equal and almost impossible to surpass".Quoted in Culshaw, p. 220 Andrew Porter called it a "landmark in gramophone history". In The Sydney Morning Herald, Roger Covell wrote of "the alchemy of Decca's magnificent, stunning, overwhelming new recording",Covell, Roger. "Wagnerian glories", The Sydney Morning Herald, 17 July 1965, p. 12 and The New York Herald-Tribune'''s Rich wrote, "It is not only Wagner and that are justified by this new album. Suddenly the whole concept of recorded opera seems to make a new kind of sense".Rich, Alan. "New Recordings", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 25 July 1965, p. 37
1965: For the last of the four Ring operas to be recorded for Decca's cycle, Nilsson and Hotter were cast as before. Windgassen did not wish to record Siegmund, the tenor lead, and James King took the role. For Sieglinde, Culshaw cast Régine Crespin. Flagstad had died in 1962 and for Fricka, which she had played in , Culshaw hoped to cast another former Brünnhilde, Astrid Varnay, but she declined and Christa Ludwig sang the part. Among the nine Valkyries were well-known singers including Helga Dernesch, Brigitte Fassbaender and Berit Lindholm.
Cast
Siegmund – James King Sieglinde – Régine Crespin